No Rest for the Righteous
by brooklynkings
Summary: Steve Rogers: the mission I couldn't complete, the target I couldn't bring myself to kill. Mercy was foreign to the thing that I was then, but I spared you anyway, without even understanding why. I only knew that something in you called to something in me, and that, underneath the objective to eliminate my target, lurked the powerful, primal urge to protect you. (Stucky)


**No Rest for the Righteous**

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"There are maps through your bones and skin, to the way you've felt and the way you've been."

\- Christopher Poindexter -

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I dragged you out of the Potomac and left you on the bank, bruises blooming fresh on your face, the red of your blood seeping into the red of your uniform. The colors were nearly identical, and how fitting is that, how perfect? Captain America bleeds just the same crimson as Old Glory.

I looked down at you, Steve Rogers: the mission I couldn't complete, the target I couldn't bring myself to kill. Mercy was foreign to the thing that I was then, but I spared you anyway, without even understanding why. I only knew that something in you called to something in me, and that, underneath the objective to eliminate my target, lurked the powerful, primal urge to protect you.

Pulling you out of the river was easy, almost thoughtless. I did it the way you tie your shoes, a habit so ingrained that it's worked into your bones. Like saving you was second nature, a thing my body remembered even when my mind had forgotten.

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I used to make fun of you for never throwing away food. You'd leave leftovers in the fridge until they started to stink, hang on to the molding heels of bread like it'd be a cardinal sin to get rid of them. It was 'cause you grew up so poor, I figured, that you always clung to scraps.

Maybe that's what I'm doing now, keeping this journal. My memories are fuzzy and fragmented, but I'm afraid to lose even these little pieces, so I do what I can to keep them safe. When I remember, I write, turning figments of the past into something real and tangible. So if I lose them again, I can read these words and remind myself of the truth.

You and me, we've always defined ourselves in relation to one another. So I guess it makes sense that, while I'm trying to figure out who I am, it's you I want to talk to.

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We might have both grown up in Brooklyn, but we were from different worlds. You and your ma had a tiny shoebox apartment in Red Hook, and it really says something that I can recall, even now, what kind of shithole it was. Every stick of furniture was secondhand, the walls so thin you could hear your neighbor taking a piss, the linoleum floor stained and peeling. Somehow, though, Sarah managed to make it feel more like a home than my family's fancy brownstone.

I can't remember how we met, and I don't know why a boy from Prospect Heights would have been wandering around your neighborhood, but I tell myself stories about how it could have happened.

Today, I imagine it went something like this: I snuck off to Red Hook on a dare, trying to prove how brave I was. I overheard you getting your scrawny ass kicked and rushed to help, blacked one boy's eye and punched the other in his breadbasket. The bullies ran off, because they were the kind of kids who didn't like even odds. Knowing you—stubborn, prideful little shit that you are—you probably acted ungrateful and told me to get lost. But since I'm spinning this tale from whole cloth, we'll pretend it went down differently. Let's say you were happy for the help, so we shook hands and exchanged names, and we were inseparable from that day forward.

That's a nice story, isn't it?

It's strange that I'm finally starting to remember so much, but I can't recall _this_ , the most important thing of all: the moment you came into my life.

If I ever see you again, I'll have to ask how it really happened.

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You're with me 'til the end of the line, you said—but the thing about lines is that they've got no beginning and no end. Not that you'd remember that; you always were shit at math.

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I am rediscovering the foods I like, now that I have the freedom to choose what to eat. This morning I bought ripe plums at the market, and the first bite tasted like nothing so much as privilege. Fresh fruit wasn't always so easy to come by, and as I walked back to the bolthole I've made my base, I remembered buying you oranges in the middle of winter in 1940 or 1941. They cost a pretty penny, and you complained that I shouldn't have spent money on treats for you.

"It's not a treat," I said. "Somebody's gotta make sure your skinny ass doesn't get scurvy, yeah?"

The oranges sat untouched for two whole days, because you can be petty and mean when the mood strikes you. But I guess your obsessive need not to waste food overcame your desire to spite me, and you ate every one of them before they could go bad.

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It's three o'clock in the morning, and I can't sleep. When I close my eyes, I see ghosts. Some of them are people I murdered, and some of them are people I loved, but they're all dead and gone. All but you, the one who got away.

That's not quite right, though, because you didn't just slip through my fingers. I let you go, let you live, and there was nothing accidental about it. Sparing you was the first real choice I'd made for myself in seventy years.

What went into the river was less than a man—an asset, a weapon, a ghost—but the Potomac washed me clean, and when I came out of the water I felt like _someone_.

Dad made sure I was baptized when I was thirteen (and it was a full dunking too, not any of that sprinkling shit the priests did to you when you were a baby). I remember going under, being submerged in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Afterward, Rebecca asked me how I felt, and all I said was, "Wet."

It was disappointing, because I had this idea that the ceremony would change me, that maybe God could make me a better Bucky Barnes than I could manage to be on my own. Well, it didn't, and he couldn't. Now, on the other side of the new millennium, I remember pulling you to the bank of the Potomac, both of us drenched in river water, and I think I might understand the power of baptism a bit better.

I'm not saying divine intervention had anything to do with it, because I'm pretty sure God is the world's most widely believed fairy tale.

I didn't need God that day, anyway, because I had you. Maybe that's awful to say, but blasphemy is the least of my sins, so I might as well be honest. Your love is the one thing I consider sacred, your body the only communion I care to take. I'll whisper ' _til the end of the line_ into my pillow every night like a prayer, as if repeating that promise will somehow bring me closer to you.

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Falling only took a few seconds, but I lived a small eternity within them as I plummeted to the earth. I watched the train speeding away, taking you on to the rest of your days. That's all I could think as I screamed, raw panic ripping through me. _This is it. I'll never see Steve again._

My life did not flash before my eyes, and I don't remember hitting the ground.

I fall when I sleep, only the ravine is so much deeper in my dreams, an endless pit that I could never crawl myself out of.

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Here's a secret, one I buried so deep that HYDRA couldn't uproot it: I've loved you for the better part of a century. Even in the dark winter between missions—even when I was a mindless monster—I carried this immutable truth in the marrow of my bones.

HYDRA took my memories, my name, my body, but there is no force in the world that could pry you out of my heart.

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End file.
